Ethnic Relations in Miami Unravel as Argument Over Pants Erupts Into Violence : Racial strife: Tensions flare between the Cuban majority and Haitians upset by their treatment. A bloody fight with police has angered many.

The Haitian says the Cuban threw the first punch, and the Cuban says it was the Haitian. Whatever the truth, a dispute about alterations to a pair of pants has torn apart the tenuous seams of ethnic peace in Miami.

Just as the Haitian got the worst of the fistfight, the Haitian community here feels it inevitably gets the worst of things from the powers-that-be, whether from city officials, police or the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Friday, Miami simmered. Haitians planned a weekend of protests, this time not just against the Cuban-owned clothing store where the original fracas took place on June 29, but against the police, who crushed a demonstration at the shopping plaza where the store is situated.

There had been demonstrations all week at the shopping plaza. Then, on Thursday, in full riot gear and with TV cameras rolling live for the evening news, police arrested 62 Haitians, clubbing some of them bloody with nightsticks.

Many observers were horrified. To them, the protest had seemed generally peaceful, if illegal. The local NAACP called for a federal civil rights investigation. Attorneys for the Haitians threatened to sue.

For its part, the Miami police department insisted that the officers had had no choice. Chief Perry Anderson said that some of the crowd had rushed the barricades.

“Police were trying to maintain control after days of extreme abuse . . . days of being pelted . . . “ said Anderson, who had personally tried to calm the protesters several times.

Most of those arrested were locked up for the night and charged with the misdemeanor of unlawful assembly. But others--those suspected of being illegal aliens--were sent to the federal immigration authority’s Krome Detention Center west of the city. Five still remain there, officials said.

There are about 90,000 Haitians in Miami, a usually docile population that only in recent years has begun to raise its collective voice. Now, there is fury in the words. “Instead of justice we have powerful fascists who can apply their pressure on the police department,” the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste complained.

He spoke Friday at the Haitian Refugee Center. Before him was a banner condemning “police brutality.” And at his side were many of those who had been arrested. A few yanked up their shirts and displayed the bruises.

Pierre Vancol, a husky 46-year-old laborer, said that his wife had sent him to the grocery to buy juice. He was talking with a friend at the shopping area when squads of police officers descended on the parking lot.

“They pushed me right over, and, after I fell, they hit me with the sticks and jabbed me, there, there, there,” he said, his fingers moving about.

Vancol then folded back his upper lip to show a row of fresh stitches. He took from his pocket a small envelope that held a broken dental plate.

“The police call us damn Haitians and hit and hit,” said another of those arrested, Wilder Cheri, a 24-year-old with his two young children nearby.

In many ways, these events are an odd turn; many Haitian and Cuban leaders emphasize that there is no deep enmity between the two peoples.

“We have enjoyed warm relations for years,” the Rev. Fritz Bazin said. “We are close culturally, in music, in food, even in superstitions.”

But the current discontent began with a Cuban and a Haitian at loggerheads--and ever since it has carried the tinge of ethnic resentments.

Cuban Luis Reyes owns the Rapid Transit Factory Outlet, a clothing store in a busy shopping center not far from the neighborhood known as Little Haiti. He has been there five years and says 80% of his clientele is Haitian.

One of those Haitian customers, Abner Alezi, 44, came to pick up a pair of pants on June 29 and ended up in a scuffle after demanding that they be hemmed.

Accounts conflict about who started the fight and how many took part, but Alezi emerged from the store with a cut face. A small crowd gathered.

Policemen came to sort it out, and the officers said that, when they ordered the injured Haitian to leave, he refused. They arrested him for trespassing.

News of the episode quickly was spread by a Haitian radio station, and the broadcast left little doubt as to whom the station presumed had been wronged.

Two hundred angry people gathered. The next day, there were even more. When stones and bottles crashed against the store, Reyes lowered protective metal shutters over his windows.

In effect, he was a prisoner in his own business until policemen sneaked him out through a back door. The Cuban then decided to let things cool down before reopening.

In the meantime, Reyes’ cause lit passions on Cuban talk radio. Callers wanted to know how police could let an honest shopkeeper be driven out of business. And they were not alone.

The majority of the Miami City Commission is Cuban, as is much of the city itself. People expressed impatience. The early strategy of police restraint no longer seemed reasonable. How long would this “mob” be allowed to rule?

Reyes opened again on Thursday. Soon, 100 or so Haitians assembled. By then, however, the city had made a decision to get tough.

“We have to respond to crimes,” Commissioner Miriam Alonso said.

But the brass-knuckles approach, just like the earlier scuffle over a pair of pants, seemed to the Haitian community another symptom of racism and abuse. “Alezi was just the drop that made the bucket overflow,” attorney Phillip Brutus said.

For years, Haitians have complained of a double standard in U.S. immigration policy, protesting that Cubans arrive in inner tubes and are welcomed to America, but Haitians come aboard rickety sailboats and are either sent back or locked up in a detention camp.

Lately, Haitians have marched to protest federal rules that bar them from donating blood because of the high incidence of AIDS among them.

“We see ourselves as victims,” Bazin said. “And in Miami it certainly did not help when our Cuban leaders refused to welcome Nelson Mandela” on June 28, complaining that he had befriended Fidel Castro.

The Haitians have now applied for a city permit to begin demonstrations once again in front of the Rapid Transit Factory Outlet. On Friday, as plans were made and other rallies held, the store itself was quiet.

Reyes opened up and warily watched the door. Once, the Cuban owner ventured outside to talk things over with a single Haitian handing out leaflets.

“What the police did was a disgrace,” the Haitian said.

“Yes, but are you aware that my life was in danger?” Reyes asked.

“Yes, but why did you assault a Haitian citizen?”

“It was the other way around.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”